RIAA Files 531 More Lawsuits 84
nuclear305 writes "CNN is reporting that the RIAA has filed 531 'John Doe' lawsuits against defendants in Atlanta; Philadelphia; Orlando, Florida; and Trenton, New Jersey. Of course, once these thugs find out who you are, you can pay them off for the small fee averaging $3,000."
MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:5, Offtopic)
The rejected story:
That's the story that didn't get posted, but if any of you got a nastygram from your ISP, you deserve to know about this. Point your ISP to the Slashdot posting with the torrent and demand that they reinstate your account, and more to it: demand an apology from Microsoft. There are plenty of comments from others about this being the Linux 2.6.2 kerenl. MS is having ISPs shut off accounts for downloading Linux!Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:2)
This is a serious mistake, and somebody's liable for it. IANAL, but I'd say breach of contract on the ISP's part and "whatever liability it is to falsely accuse a party of infringement---I know not the name" on Microsoft, the breach of contract being the more serious. But that's just my wild guess; don't take what I say as canon (and this includes you moderators and repliers).
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:2, Funny)
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Go for it, man, if not for the your own rights and those same rights held by others online, then to strike a blow against that oft-belligerent corporation, Microsoft, or at least, so as to appeal to your baser desires, for the money. Don't tell me that such an award would be but a drop in the bucket and therefore not worth the effort for you (because if you do, I'll be asking for a donation to the "Put Undefined Parameter Through College Fund
Viva la revolucion!
~UP
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:1)
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:4, Insightful)
This is indeed something to be angry and appalled at, an action which is both needless and malicious to innocent individuals. A nice, swift legal slap to the face might make them at least consider a change in the manner they pursue the illegal leaks, hostings, and downloadings.
~UP
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:1)
If you tried the other source torrents and any of them were legitimate, I suppose keeping quiet is your best bet. Similarly, if you hate dealing with big companies or making waves, silence is the
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:2)
I agree with the sentiments, but if you read the letter carefully, Microsoft's wording is "may" have engaged.....
In that case, it's really up to the ISP to decide what to do.
If they decide to investigate thoroughly or summarily close someone's account without investigation, it's their decision. Microsoft can argue that it's the ISP's fault the account was canceled. They only advised the ISP of the possibility that some wrongdoing might be taking place and what to do if it was taking place.
But I sympathi
Re:MS going after innocent P2P users as well (Score:2, Informative)
The recent Verizon decision says ISPs have no responsibility under the DMCA safe harbor to monitor or control access related to P2P activity, anyway.
Thus, your ISP should have told microsoft to pound sand rather than suspending your account. Even if you had been distributing the MS source rather than Linux.
See the court's deicion [eff.org] (the relevant text begins on bottom half of page 7 and especially on page 10.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the DMCA (Score:2)
1) MS sends a letter to the ISP notifying them of alleged infringement.
2) The ISP notifies you.
3) You should inform the ISP that you were not infringing.
If you do so within a certain time frame, your ISP is off the hook and they can reinstate your account (if it got suspended).
Otherwise, they are legally obligated to cut you off.
I am sure that others, more knowledgeable in this field, will be able to point you to the exact wording that you should be using
Me?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Me?!? (Score:1)
Re:Me?!? (Score:5, Informative)
You are in charge of your Internet connection, you signed the EULA, you pay the bills, you answer the lawsuit. It doesn't need to be beyond a reasonable doubt, it merely needs to be proved.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Re:Me?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Me?!? (Score:2)
Re:Me?!? (Score:2)
Re:Me?!? (Score:1)
Re:Me?!? (Score:1)
Huh? To me, "proved beyond a reasonable doubt" is a weaker standard than an unqualified "proved", which ordinarily means irrefutably true.
Re:Me?!? (Score:2)
One of the most egregious statements ever made in this venerable forum. There is such depth - and humour - in it that it stands firmly on its own.
Thugs or not, they have the right to do so (Score:5, Insightful)
However, they are well within their rights to be doing what they are doing. It is the music traders who decided that copyright did not apply to them who took the first step in breaking the law, and it is they who ultimately hold responsibility for their actions.
I remember back when the RIAA started out shutting down P2P sites like Napster that people were screaming about how Napster wasn't at fault, it was the individual members of the file sharing community who were responsible for violating copyrights. The thought went, "if the RIAA wants to sue anyone it should be those users individually, and it would be unfeasible for the RIAA to do such a thing because how much could they really gain by suing kids in their basements? Happy days!" Well, now the RIAA is doing exactly that. It's kind of ironic how those users who thought they could hide in anonymity behind the crowds of file sharers are now finding that there is no hiding because the RIAA is just going to catch everyone with a wide net.
I don't think the RIAA is going about this the right way, but I can't see how they are overstepping their legal bounds.
Re:Thugs or not, they have the right to do so (Score:3, Insightful)
The suits, yes; the method, no (Score:3, Interesting)
However -- and this is a big however -- they are completely outisde their rights using the powers the DMCA has given them to bring about these suits. Under the bill of rights, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, and deprivation of property without due process of law, the RIAA would have to get a warrant issued to be able to
Re:The suits, yes; the method, no (Score:2)
Re:The suits, yes; the method, no (Score:2)
You're right though: as phrased, the article in question doesn't make it clear that they're using this power at the moment. Perhaps they've decided to ignore the law they went to so much trouble to pass, because they are nice people! We can all hope.
Re:The suits, yes; the method, no (Score:2)
Re:The suits, yes; the method, no (Score:2)
It's not just that: the DMCA gives copyright holders rights in this situation they ought not to have. If an ISP sticks up for its customers, then bravo to them -- but they're going out on a legal limb to do it. And if they don't, well, their "acting like idiots" may actually be more "acting like people who are scared of legal reprecussions."
It may not be the same case here, but I don't trust most service providers any more than I trust the RIAA.
I
I Have But Two Words for You, Sir: (Score:5, Interesting)
I cannot say I speak for file-sharers, but we all must take into account the culture of rebellion, especially against lawyer groups and corporations, in analysing the file-sharing movement and practice.
(The RIAA does not need to operate the way it does today. It could, for example, simply apply itself as a marketing, CD manufacturing, and distribution service, still garner substantial profit margins, and NOT take the copyright of the artist and cheat the artist of his/her/their proper compensation in practicing that business model. Things could be made better in this regard, for this subject, and there are people, plebs if you will, who are making the demand for change; the actions those individuals take in stating their demands are not necessarily organized or nonagressive in nature.)
~UP
Re:I Have But Two Words for You, Sir: (Score:3, Funny)
I always laugh when I see this analogy. Yeah, civil disobediance. The thousands of people who have
Re:I Have But Two Words for You, Sir: (Score:2, Insightful)
Those who protest may not do so out in
Not civil disobedience (Score:1)
It's only civil disobedience if you disobey an unjust law to protest that unjust law. The appropriate way to protest exploitation and high prices is a boycott.
Re:Not civil disobedience (Score:2)
2. RIAA notices that profits are down!
3. RIAA Buys more bad laws -- "See, we're losing more money to those Evil Content Pirates(tm)".
[and for those who really need it...]
4. Profit!
Re:I Have But Two Words for You, Sir: (Score:2)
Then who is Henry David Thoreau?
Re:I Have But Two Words for You, Sir: (Score:2)
Re:Thugs or not, they have the right to do so (Score:3, Insightful)
Well how could you, when every time you blink they're busily forcing the government to extend the laws so that their actions are always Within The Bounds.
They're not being "thugs" today (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that many of the RIAA's tactics are heavy handed and will ultimately be detrimental to the RIAA. I think that the penalties for copyright violation under U.S. law are unduly harsh.
Its use of the DMCA to get subpoenas without judicial review was a threat to liberty.
But the RIAA does represent copyright holders, and 'John Doe' suits against alleged copyright violators are entirely appropriate. It's by means of such law suits, rather than additional legislation calling for mandatory DRM or special police powers for copyright holders, that the RIAA can protect its rights without infringing ours.
So labelling the RIAA "thugs" in this case is entirely inappropriate.
Or would you also label the Free Software Foundation "thugs" if it attempted to enforce the provisions of the GPL against a company using GPL'd source in a released product without also releasing the source code?
Be smart. (Score:4, Interesting)
Reason being is you are listening to bad music. Stop supporting or even ripping off the RIAA and wake up to the fact that any music that is associated with them is terrible.
Re:Be smart. (Score:3, Informative)
I'd love to be able to search Itunes or Napster2 and find the music I like, but other than using itunes to look popular songs, and using napster to download music videos, the online selection is rather limited.
I find more music just searching with the terms on a p2p network, all kinds of music I never heard. In fact, I found some 1200
To sum this all up (Score:3, Funny)
Willing to pay for music, video, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be willing to pay
- as much as $0.025 (2.5 cents) per song
for the right to have 256-bit mp3's of the top 10,000 songs of all time. That translates to 10000 *But, what I'd really like to do is pay that directly to the artists involved. Or, I'm willing to pay the copyright owners, as long as that's not a firm that's rampantly cheating the artists out of their fair share.
I say, let someone accumulate enough distribution rights, and I'll be willing to purchase some music online. Until then, I'm sticking to my old LP's, some CD's I have received as gifts, and what I hear off the air. I don't like being a criminal, but I also don't like being price-gouged (or a party to price-gouging of recording artists who aren't really that wealthy either).
Re:Willing to pay for music, video, etc. (Score:2, Insightful)
Holy bejeezus!! If a song is 3 minutes on average, that's 30,000 minutes = 500 hours of NON-REPEATING music. If you're paying $250, that's 50 cents an hour if you listen to each song only once, 25 cents an hour if you listen to each song only twice, etc.
25 cents an hour for entertainment? You can hardly find ANY entertainment worth 25 cents an hour these days. At least not
Re:Willing to pay for music, video, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
$0.99: No DRM, lossless (FLAC/ZIP)
$0.50: No DRM, good lossy (MP3# VBR 192$0.25: DRM, lossy (I-Tunes)
$0.005: Pay per play, crummy quality.
I honestly don't see a good reason to pay greater than eight or nine dollars for tracks, when I can own most of the CDs I want for that price. And they generally have more than nine tracks anyway.
Re:Willing to pay for music, video, etc. (Score:1)
As to paying 8-9 for a CD and getting more tracks, that's true with some of the music I like (and I thus buy the CDs) but certainly not for "one hit wonders"; it is for these that pay-per-track is attractive.
If my local music store could burn me a CD with my selections (no DRM of course), I'd happily pay a buck a song.
Let them sue me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let them sue me... (Score:1)
Re:Let them sue me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let them sue me... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you've got legal copies of your CD's, and you're sharing the mp3 files with your friends, who also have legal copies of those CD's, YOU'RE STILL A TARGET FOR A LAWSUIT!
Its just that, in the course of that lawsuit, the truth will be revealed.
That's something that people just don't seem to 'get' about these RIAA suits. They're not actually saying that something illegal is going on - only t
Re:Let them sue me... (Score:2)
A bit off-topic but still... (Score:3, Informative)
Using lame with Easy CD-DA extractor on my 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, and a 40x CD-rom I still can't encode faster than 5x.
Sure, if I encoded using Xing, I could encode 32x realtime from cd on my old 800 Mhz, but you get what you pay for. That goes for time as well.
The MP3's I get from lame (usally preset: extreme) beats the hell out of the ones I gett from Xing at any bitrate. You know... Like multipass videoencoding takes alot more time, but results in a better quality/bit-rate.
And... yes. Wit
Lawsuits are our friends! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people infringe copyright because:
Obviously, the industry wants people to want music, so they can't mess with 1.
There are two ways to eliminate problem 2. The most damaging way is to make copyright infringement harder, because that involves destroying the Internet. The non-destructive way to eliminate problem 2 is to offer cheap, non-DRM music downloads to as many people as possible (minors included), but this is only easy when the problem 3 is dealt with.
The only real way to eliminate problem 3 is suing people. It doesn't take many people getting in trouble to scare the general public away from copyright infringement, especially if there are easier alternatives (see above). I think it's great that they're doing this, because it allows them to offer cheap unencumbered music downloads, which is much better than their current policy of corrupting our government and destroying the Internet.
Re:Lawsuits are our friends! (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA and friends want to have their cake and eat it too
- they do their best to prevent illegal copying
- and they charge a MEDIA TAX (eg in Canada) to recoup losses from copying
Aside from the blatant implication that anyone who uses CDR media is BREAKING THE LAW , I also resent the fact that people are expected to PAY the costs of a crime without actually having committed one.IF they were only interested in preventing copyright violations, then there would NOT be a "blanket" fee imposed on CDR media, irrespective of its use.
They're nothing more than a brain dead business who cannot see past the tip of their own nose. They need to change their business model to keep pace with the world, not start taxing every man-woman-and-child for doing something which has NOTHING inherently to do with EITHER music OR copyright violation.
- I buy 100 pack of CDR Media
- I use it to backup my HDD (mostly my own original digital photography)
In what way is that violating anyones copyright or depriving "the RIAAs of the world" of income they have every right to collect?in no way whatsoever
Yet if I was in Canada I'd be paying them FEES, simply because I'm backing up to CDR.
Dodging blank media fees (Score:1)
Title 17 Section 1008 says they cannot sue! (Score:3, Interesting)
Those same recording media fees are charged here in the USA, too (on blank cassettes and "Music" CD-Rs). This was made law at the same time as suits against consumers for making copies were prohibited!
I keep wondering how they are suing noncommerical infringers considering that the law says they can't sue them.
Title 17, Chapter 10 [copyright.gov] "1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distri
Re:Title 17 Section 1008 says they cannot sue! (Score:2)
Re:Title 17 Section 1008 says they cannot sue! (Score:1)
which in
Re:Title 17 Section 1008 says they cannot sue! (Score:2)
That's not true of general purpose computers. This was discussed in the Diamond v. RIAA case a few years back with regards to portable mp3 players.
Re:Title 17 Section 1008 says they cannot sue! (Score:1)
I'll h
Re:Lawsuits are our friends! (Score:2)
Years ago, people said 'hey that's a great record, can I borrow it?' Years ago, people responded 'I can make you a tape.'
This is years ago. The RIAA has been doing nicely all along, thank you. They're still in business, and they're still fat.
Now, however, we have a world global community, thanks to the Internet, so the means of communication have changed.
But the idea is the same. 'Listen to this.' 'Cool, can I borrow it?' 'I can make you a copy.'
People want to discuss and exchange mu
The RIAA reminds me of (Score:1)
BOOM.
Bye bye RIAA.
No problem (Score:2)
Doesn't seem that bad... (Score:1)
Re:Doesn't seem that bad... (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't seem that bad... (Score:2)
Interesting idea. Though wouldn't it work better if the funds went to pay musicians for creating and releasing music under a free license? If you used independants (not pop 40 divas), you could pay for a lot of music. Much more than RIAA companies could ever make. They spend most of their money on marketing, not music. Not only would you have music free of legal problems, but you'd also put the "recording industry" and their marketing drones out of business.
Oh, and I'm sure they can sue you a second time
If you're sick of the RIAA!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking for new and interesting music?
The AMPFEA.ORG Files Repository [ampfea.org] contains a signficant daily portion of new music which has been released on the 'net by independent artists.
The new-music mailing list is a handy, moderated list for new music announcements from fresh artists around the glob. [ampfea.org]
Go here if you've got music of your own online that you want to announce to the new-music list
You don't *NEED* record companies any more, in order to find good music. You only need them to make you feel good about belonging to a society...
future of music (Score:1)
Does the RIAA own silence? (Score:2)
What if I make a bunch of MP3s, with appropriate lengths, filesizes, and ID3 tags, and put them up for share? The catch is, there's no music in them. Just total silence. Granted, I'll piss off everyone who tries to download them, but what happens when the RIAA goes to sue me? Did I infringe their copyright simply by giving the files the same names as song titles?
Re:Does the RIAA own silence? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Does the RIAA own silence? (Score:2)
Well then, I offer up my collection of songs by Corn, Deaf Leopard, and Outcast.
You know, after reading those names again, suddenly it's kinda funny.
Now if only I had a direct connection to the internet....
They're not suing downloaders! (Score:2)
Yes, the RIAA is an evil cartel of music labels forcing out good music for cheap glitter at high prices, but they are within their legal rights to sue. They want to go back to the way things were, they charge
Philadelphia reporting (Score:1)
forgot to edit (Score:1)